Saturday, October 8, 2011

Chocolate Wasted Cake

Ever since my brother started using the phrase "I wanna get chocolate wasted" from the movie Grown Ups I've been wanting to make this cake for his birthday. Being a chocoholic myself, I had no trouble coming up with ways to fill this cake with layer upon layer of chocolatey goodness. Just looking at this cake, I think you'll agree that it definitely deserves its name.

Photo Credit: Ryan Rivera

To create this chocolate beauty, I baked two layers of delicious chocolate cake. Then, I drizzled each cake layer with some Kahlua. I wanted to use chocolate liqueur like Godiva dark chocolate or white chocolate, but all I had on hand was Kahlua, which is a coffee-flavored liqueur and Disaronno, which is an almond-flavored liqueur. Either one would've worked well with the chocolate but since my brother also loves coffee, I decided to go with the Kahlua. Then, I filled and frosted the cake with rich chocolate buttercream.

Then, I completely covered the sides of the cake with Ghirardelli semi-sweet chocolate chips. The trick to doing this is to take a handful of chocolate chips and gently press them onto the cake. I placed the cake on a revolving cake stand and I had a large shallow bowl underneath it to catch any chocolate chips that may fall.

Next, I topped the cake with an assortment of chocolate candies. For this cake, I used Hershey Kisses, Hershey bars, Kit Kat bars, Twix bars and Whoppers. With so many candy choices of out there, I'm sure I can make this cake dozens of times and have a different batch of candies to top the cake every time.

Last, I drizzled some melted chocolate all over the cake. I crisscrossed the melted chocolate on top and then poured more around the edges of the cake. Think Jackson Pollock. I made sure there was plenty of melted chocolate dripping down the sides of the cake. I think it makes it look even more decadent and mouthwatering.

I hope this cake inspires you to create your own chocolate wasted cake. What I love about this cake is it's absolutely over-the-top with chocolate and yet it's pretty easy to make, even for a novice baker. It's the kind of cake you just wanna dive into and devour. You can use your own chocolate cake recipe and top it with all the chocolate candy your heart desires. And with Halloween just around the corner, I'm sure they'll be plenty of chocolate candy around to make this cake :-)

Special thanks to Jef at My Food Geek for sharing some food photography tips with me recently. I tried them out and I'm really happy with how my pictures turned out. Thanks again my friend!

Chocolate Wasted CakeThis is an egg-free recipe I created to accommodate my son's food allergies. If you'd like to use my original chocolate cake recipe please go to my post One Good Chocolate Cake) Makes 8-12 servingsAllergy Note: contains wheat and dairy ingredients*See Notes for allergen-friendly or vegan alternatives

To make the cake:(Note: Instead of milk, you can replace it with water or cooled brewed
coffee. Instead of butter, you can use vegetable oil. Instead of honey,
you can use corn syrup or agave nectar. Instead of semi-sweet chocolate
chips, you can use Enjoy Life brand chocolate chips. For allergen-free
alternatives for the candies, you can try Enjoy Life chocolate chips,
bars or cookies)

Preheat oven to 325 350 F degrees. Grease and dust two to three 8-inch or 9-inch cake pans with flour. To prevent the cake from sticking to the pan, line the bottom with a parchment paper circle. Set aside.

Sift together flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt. In a separate mixing bowl, combine milk, butter, honey and vanilla extract. Slowly add the dry ingredients into the milk/butter mixture. Mix until combined. Fold in the semi-sweet chocolate chips. Pour in the batter into prepared cake pans. Bake for 30 to 45 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Remove from oven and wait for about 10 minutes to remove from cake pans and place on a cooling rack. Allow to cool completely before decorating.

To make the frosting:

Note: instead of butter, you can use any allowed margarine, Spectrum organic vegetable shortening, or coconut oil. Instead of milk, you can use rice milk or soy milk.

In a large mixing bowl, sift together powdered sugar and cocoa powder. Add the butter, milk and vanilla extract. Using an electric mixer, slowly mix together at a low speed. Once all the ingredients are combined, increase the speed and beat till fluffy.

To assemble the cake:

Place the first cake layer on a plate or cake circle. Lightly drizzle with liqueur. Spread an even layer of frosting. Place the second cake layer on top of the frosting. Lightly drizzle with liqueur. Cover the sides and top of the cake with frosting. Cover the sides of the cake with semi-sweet chocolate chips and cover the top with assorted chocolate candies. Drizzle the melted chocolate all over the top of the cake and let it drip down the sides of the cake.

Please note: I am not a paid endorser nor did I accept any free samples of the brands or products mentioned in this post. I just love them and wanted to share them with you :-)

I love how you just went free-for-all on this cake & the craziness is what makes it so beautiful (kinda modern art chocolate wasted). I like the Halloween Candy idea... would make for awesome colors too - beautiful!!

Wow! Thank you so much! I'm so overwhelmed by how much everyone loves this cake. I guess there's a lot of people who have a hankering for chocolate right now. My brother was soooo happy when I presented this cake to him. After we sang Happy Birthday to him, he got big slice and washed it down with a tall glass of milk :-)

Absolutely amazing! I follow your blog since now :D Thanks for sharing all the recipes.I invite you to visit my blog too, this is about makeup, maybe you can be interested on it! :)http://virbeautyandmakeup.blogspot.com

I was so proud...I just made it and it was very simple! Great idea, beautiful, and it looks so yummy. Going to bring it for my niece's birthday this afternoon! She spotted it one day and said, "Mom, please, can I have that for my birthday?!" Well, auntie is pulling through!

I showed a picture of this cake to my boyfriend and he said "we gotta make that!" so he picked up the ingredients and we baked it yesterday. Not only was it super fun to make, it tasted amazing. The only change I made was using store bought chocolate icing instead of making frosting from scratch. It wasn't nearly as rich as I thought it would be, which is great.. It was so yummy with a big glass of milk :) thank you for the idea!

Thanks, this cake inspired one that I made for my friend's 30th bday tonight. I stole the cover it in candy and drizzle it with melted chocolate idea -it looked fantastic (esp since my yummy frosting was not pretty). However I found it such a mess to cut and serve, the chocolate all chunks together, although no one cared by that point. Any tips on how you cut the cake into something that resembled slices?

This looks delicious!! I'm a chocolate/peanut butter fan. I may try this but with a peanut butter icing for the top, sides and between the layers. And then continue on with the choc chips, candy and drizzle. Yummmmm!

@Alaa: I use either Hershey's cocoa powder or Ghiradelli cocoa powder.

@Tracie: It is a bit of a challenge cutting into this cake especially with all the big pieces of chocolate candies on top. You can either remove them before cutting the cake and simply place them back on each slice or leave them on a plate and let guests choose which candy they want. You can also arrange them in such a way that will allow the knife to cut right through (i.e. arranging longer pieces like spokes in a wheel). Hope this helps :-)

I'm in the process of making this cake for my blog post tomorrow (it's National Chocolate Cake Day!) and I'll be linking back here. I'm decorating tomorrow, but the cake and frosting are all ready to go now. This may be the best chocolate cake I've ever had. Thank you SO much for this recipe. I can't wait to share it with my readers.

So Glad Somewhere in the Middle chose this cake for the Crazy Cooking Challenge, it led me to you! I'm in heaven, I've pinned, liked you on FB and also your newest google friend, I don't want to miss anything, yum!

I hope you see this comment and can answer my question. Is there anything you can use to replace the liqueur? We are Mormon and don't consume alcohol. I would still love to make this but really need an alternative...

Im sorry but I made this cake tonight. I spent four hours on it... and it turned out HORRIBLY. it tasted fine but the texture was off.. it shouldve called for eggs or something. it looked more like a brownie and was the texture of a molten cake. it wouldnt come out of the cake pans because it was sticking to the bottom even though i thorougly greased them. Im sorry but you may want to figure out what is wrong or try some eggs.

Anonymous (re:cake texture): this cake is a denser cake than let's say a sponge cake or a cake made from a cake mix, kind of a like a pound cake. I made this cake egg-free because my kids have egg allergies but I do have a good chocolate cake recipe that does include eggs if you're interested: http://artofdessert.blogspot.com/2008/10/one-good-chocolate-cake.html

Laura: I usually drizzle 2-3 Tablespoons per cake layer, but it's really up to you if you want less or more alcohol. If you want a non-alcoholic option for drizzling, you can try Hershey's chocolate syrup, Torani flavored syrups (for coffee), or simple syrup (2 parts water 1 part sugar).

well now that has left me weak in my knees...and my tongue is slapping my brain out...shame on you...really..that is the most awesome cake I have ever had the pleasure of meeting. Thank you so very much for sharing!

I just baked this cake and ran into trouble when I combined the butter, milk and other liquids: the melted butter quickly formed clumps. I threw out this first batch and tried again and it did the same thing, so I decided to keep going. As I added in the dry ingredients it got a little better, but it was still a little clumpy when I poured into the pans. I am hoping that when it baked the butter melted out into the rest of the cake, but haven't cut into it yet. Any thoughts on why this happened? Do you think the cake will still taste okay?

I made this cake for Valentines Day. All three of my layers came out totally flat. I presumed that I didn't put enough batter in the first pan. I decided I didn't cook the second pan long enough. The third came out and I realized that something was wrong. I managed to skip the baking soda. So, I have a very delicious looking triple layer brownie thing! Fortunately, my boyfriend doesn't know the first thing about baking or care about how things turn out, and I am just as anxious to dive in as I was before the mishap :D

The moment I saw this Chocolate Wasted Cake I knew that I had to make it. To me there is nothing like a chocolate cake-it is heaven. All others are simply cakes and nothing more. I was not too happy with my first try but my nieces and nephews happily obliged, it was gone in minutes. I made another and it came out perfect so I cut half and stowed it into the back of my fridge and shared the other with my 'wasted buddies'. Thank you for the posting, you are a genius to us chocolate lovers.

We've an appointment with our accountant tomorrow to get our taxes done. She is a self-professed choco-holic. I made this cake for her just to make sure that everything goes well. I'm almost positive it'll do the job. ;) I added malted milk balls along with everything else to the top of the cake :)

This recipe has mistakes. I've been baking for 40 years.....this should specify that if you have an 8 inch pan, you need three or it will overflow. If you have 9 inch pans, they have to be at least 2 inches deep, or you have to use 3 pans, as well.

Also, the cake does NOT come out of the pan after only 10 minutes cooling time. To avoid losing the bottom half of the cake to the pan, they should be lined with greased parchment or wax paper. If you remove after only 10 minutes, the cake is still HOT and sticks to the bottom of the pan. I hate to be the party pooper here, but while the look of this one is a stunner, the actual cake recipe is a stinker. (I noticed that only one or two commenters have actually made this cake, most are just in awe of the looks, as was I.) Thanks for the great idea, it's a very cool looking cake! I made it today for my son's 21st birthday, and both layers stuck inside the pans and what came out tastes pretty yucky and ended up in the trash can. :(

I am making this for our school auction dessert dash this weekend. I have decided to use my favorite box cake mix (boo-hiss!) and follow the rest of your directions with kahlua, frosting, candy and drizzle. It may be the easy way out but with all that chocolate I don't think anyone will complain! I will let you know how much it is sells for!

Hi Rianne, I made your cake for my father in law's birthday party and it was delicious!! Everyone loved it! Thanks so much for sharing. Here is the post where I talked about it. http://www.celebrateeverydaywithme.com/2012/04/drowning-in-milk-dessert-table.html

This was so great for my chocohaloic sisters birthday! I was pressed for time, so I used 1 box pre-made cake mix (forgive me!!!) and 2-9.5 inch cake pans. Wilton Cake Release is my favorite for getting the cakes not to stick, so I didn't have an issue with sticking. The frosting was delicious! I ended up using a lot more milk to get it to a good consitency. I just kept pouring a little more in at a time, so I'm not sure how much I actual used. I also added a tsp of kaluha to the frosting. I had a little trouble with the chocolate sauce...I ended up using 2/3 cup of cream to get it thin enough to run down the sides. Is it truly 2 cups chips and 2-3 tbs cream? I used chopped heath bars, twix bars, dark hershey kisses, Greenwich bar squares, whoppers, milk duds, and chopped snickers...a great combo. I thinly I will use mini chocolate chips for the sides next time. Great idea...great concept...and a very well received birthday cake!!!!

I made this cake yesterday for my brother's birthday. He thought it was awesome and my whole family loved it! Because there were no eggs the texture was more fudgey but I thought that was fitting for the concept of a "chocolate wasted cake." The only thing was that my layers fell, which was not a big deal as I just made a double batch of frosting and filled in the spaces. Also, I do not recommend using cream in melted chocolate chips to make the drizzle. The chocolate seizes. I believe that you can use cream with melting or baking chocolate, but for this recipe I had to use vegetable oil. Thanks for this amazing recipe! It was a lot of fun.

I agree that it is best to use 9 inch pans or three 8 inch, which is what I did (it made it appear more spectacular as well to have 3 layers). I let my cakes cool for 15 minutes and then removed them just fine but I did use cake pans with cutter bars so even if they were going to stick I could not tell, they came out very easily. While I had great success with this cake, I do think that next time I will use a chocolate cake recipe that has eggs just so my layers don't sink at all. I am sorry that yours did not turn out like you wanted!

Delicious! Great recipe, Rianne. For anyone wondering, this recipe is perfect as is (meaning--the eggs aren't necessary and it's not "yucky" as one comment suggested). I omitted the alcohol (because I forgot). For more about my experience with this cake (and some pointers), check out my blog! http://abbyslabnotes.blogspot.com/2012/05/art-of-desserts-chocolate-wasted-cake.html

WOW! What a delicious masterpice! My 12 yr old daughter talked me into letting her make this and it was amazing! We omitted the alcohol. It was a little sunken and molten like but absolutely perfect!!! Thank you for sharing your recipe.....yummy!

Hi! Yes, this is an egg-free cake recipe because my kids are allergic to eggs but you can most certainly substitute with a cake recipe that contains eggs. When my kids were diagnosed with food allergies, I tried my best to rework my favorite dessert recipes so that my kids could eat them :-)

I'm sorry you had a bad experience with my cake recipe but thank you for trying it out and recommending to line the cake pans with parchment paper and using three pans. The reason why my cake recipe has no eggs is because my kids have food allergies. Ever since I found this out, I've tried to focus my attention to making allergen-friendly desserts that they could enjoy. Please feel free to use your favorite cake recipe and frosting. The whole point of me making this cake is to show that a beautiful cake doesn't need to have a fancy presentation, it just has to be made with love. I don't mean to sound corny but that's truly how I feel.

I've used this recipe about a dozen times since finding your post...It's FANTASTIC! So good that I went out and bought Anne Byrn's book. This cake is extra special with the recommended Perfect Chocolate Cake Recipes. Thank you! A++

I agree with some of the other comments. My cake also fell flat in the center and stuck to the cake pan. The cake tasted delicious but the texture was definitely off. Awesome looking cake though. Unfortunately, I am going to be using boxed mix since my first attempt yesterday was a flop. It is still a great idea for a cake but maybe with a different chocolate cake recipe.Thanks for the inspiration!

I agree with some of the other comments. My cake also fell flat in the center and stuck to the cake pan. The cake tasted delicious but the texture was definitely off. Awesome looking cake though. Unfortunately, I am going to be using boxed mix since my first attempt yesterday was a flop. It is still a great idea for a cake but maybe with a different chocolate cake recipe. Thanks for the inspiration!

This cake took my breath away when I stumbled upon it online... it's a dreamy mess! Thank you for the inspiration- I'll be making it soon and will be sure to give you credit (assuming it works out for me, of course).

Looks lovely!Have made it today for my boyfriends birthday using UK chocolate.The only part I didn't do was the melted chocolate... I'm a novice and there is no instruction on how to do this with the cream.:)

Just finished making this for my son's bday tomorrow. Had no issues with the recipe at all! Cake is perfectly formed, frosting is beautifully fluffy, drizzle is perfect! I double sifted EVERYTHING. Only difference I made was (since I forgot to let butter warm to room temp) using melted butter in the frosting. Still worked great! I cannot wait to dive into it tomorrow!

Honestly, (and this is no slight on Americans) Herschey chocolate is revolting. PLEASE don't use Hershey bars at all, but use Swiss, Belgian, German, or even English chocolate. You won't regret it. I live in Germany, and all my German friends says that they're always asked by American friends who are 'in the know' to bring chocolate from Europe over to the US as presents. I've lived in the US too, and frankly, Hersheys chocolate tastes like cardboard in comparison to European chocolate. I can't understand why they haven't gone out of business. I can only put it down to the fact that Americans are woefully ignorant about what's beyond their own shores.

Wow, what a beautiful cake! I used it for inspiration and made my own brother a birthday cake (must be something with brothers and chocolate lol) I changed it up a bit with a doctored cake mix for the base, filled with white chocolate filling and chocolate fudge frosting, and rolled in m and ms for some color. Pictures can be seen on my blog (attributed yours for the inspiration) http://cupofsugarpinchoflove.blogspot.com/2015/10/c-4-chocolate-explosion.html